[180] Right good too are the words “I will bring thee again into this land” (ibid.). For excellent would it have been for the reasoning faculty to have remained in its own keeping and not have left its home for that of sense-perception; but, failing that, it is well that it should return to itself again.
[181] Perhaps, too, in these words he hints at the doctrine of the immortality of the soul: for, as was said a little before, it forsook its heavenly abode and came into the body as into a foreign land. But the Father who gave it birth says that He will not permanently disregard it in its imprisonment, but will take pity on it and loose its chains, and escort it in freedom and safety to its mother-city, and will not stay his hand until the promises given by words have been made good by actual deeds: for it is the special attribute of God and of Him alone to say what will surely come to pass.
[182] And yet what need to say this? For His words are in no way different from deeds.
So, then, the practising soul, now fully roused and ready for the inquiry into what concerns Him that IS, at first made the conjecture that He is in a place, but after a little while, it is seized with fear at the unscrutable nature of the quest and begins to change its mind.
[183] For we read “Jacob rose up and said, that the Lord is in this place, but I knew it not” (ibid. 16). And it would have been better, I should say, to be ignorant than to suppose that God is in some place Who Himself contains and encompasses all things.